It wasnโt our intention that humanity would become the planetโs greatestย evolutionary force; yet the fact that we are confronts us with an urgent and difficult question. Some animals, plants and insects can adapt but, for many, the pace of change is too great. Should we try to save them by deliberately intervening in their evolution?
The emergence of precisionย gene-editing technologyย like CRISPR-Cas9, which acts like a molecular scalpel so fine it can swap even single letters of DNA, has made a world of chimeric species possible. … [With] synthetic biology we could potentially save the world of the present, intervening in the evolution of vulnerable species so they can survive changing climates and collapsing ecosystems.
For some, the best we can do for nature is to leave it alone.
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But itโs an illusion to suppose that, at this point, our species can simply step back. The notion that โnatureโ exists in a pure state is itself dubious, but if it were ever so, that time has long passed.
